Ben van Berkel, principal of the Amsterdam-based architectural firm UNStudio, is known for his breathtakingly swoopy designs of sleek surfaces that never seem to end. The gleaming, aluminum-clad Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, with its double-spiral-ramped concrete structure, convincingly argues the case [RECORD, November, 2006, page 128]. After completing that nine-story-high, 270,000 square-foot building, you might think that a 5,840-square-foot (gross) residential loft would be too rinky-dink a commission. Van Berkel argues otherwise: “I’m not interested as much in the scale of a project as with the program,” he explains. In this case, he was asked to design a loft
Completion Date: December 2009 Program: A 1,345-square-foot salon in the basement of a commercial building in Tokyo's trendy Daikanyama neighborhood. Design concept and solution: Yamaguchi wanted to take a basic, stripped-down space that had seen a lot of wear from previous tenants and make it over without covering up the age and texture of the room. He preserved the open-plan layout--a simple rectangle with exposed wood beams and skylights--and painted the pocked concrete-block walls white. On the rough concrete floor, he filled in depressions with mortar, creating amorphous white shapes recalling landmasses--a "time map" highlighting the history of the space.
Completion Date: September 2009 Owner: Dr. Martens Program: A 1,938-square-foot pop-up store, including a stockroom and office, in London's Old Spitalfields Market. Design concept and solution: Charged with building a utilitarian, recession-friendly pop-up store that the popular shoe company can replicate around the world, Campaign modeled the Spitalfields store after a warehouse. Evoking the brand's past as a working-class staple (and later a countercultural favorite), the architects chose inexpensive industrial materials, all plentiful and easy to assemble. Gypframe metal wall units showcase shoes on the back wall, construction-site lamps dangle from the ceiling, and wood shipping pallets stack into readymade
Completion Date: 2009 Owner: Marcus Hotels & Resorts Program: A 960-square-foot basement lounge and dining room serving the janitors, cooks, and maids of Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel. Design concept and solution: Carving out a new canteen from a provisional break room and a smattering of residual spaces, the architects wanted to create a communal gathering place that offers a respite from the formality of the Romanesque Revival hotel upstairs. The perimeter of the canteen weaves around foundation columns and mechanical areas to unify all usable space into one room. A 21-foot harvest table anchors the canteen and encourages communal dining. In
Fast-disappearing, Shanghai’s nong tang (lane houses) combine European construction with Chinese notions of tightly packed residential life. From the street, these early-20th-century buildings present gabled facades — respectable and a bit staid. But once you walk through the door to the lane running between the houses, you encounter a messy world of clothes hanging out to dry, shutters flung open, people gossiping, and kids running around. Private space bleeds into the public realm, with some folks cooking in the shared lane and others bathing their children there. Neri & Hu Design and Research Office (NHDRO) tried to capture the spirit
As dazzling as a perfect smile, IWI Orthodontics makes a bold first impression, but its elegant beauty lingers on long after. Filling the fourth floor of an existing building in the heart of Tokyo’s hip Harajuku neighborhood, the clinic specializes in an implant orthodontia system patented by its head doctor. With the goal of creating an equally innovative office space, he hired the New York City—based firm Contemporary Architecture Practice (CAP). The result of their collaboration is a sleek interior that seamlessly merges cutting-edge medical technology with gracious Japanese hospitality. As if greeting guests at a traditional inn, a staff
Standing by the handbag bar at the Louis Vuitton Maison (House of Vuitton) on New Bond Street, in London’s Mayfair district, one can observe a strange kind of tourism. The most multilingual of London sales assistants are available to sell a $4,000 handbag to just about anyone. Wherever these tourists come from, you can bet there is a Louis Vuitton (LV) closer than London. But the new store, with 16,146 square feet of retail space, is intended to be unique. “New Bond Street is the most high-end shopping street in the world,” explains New York City—based Peter Marino, the project’s
Completion Date: January 2009 Owner: Marc Jacobs International Program: An expansion of Marc Jacobs' eighth-floor SoHo showroom onto the floor below, adding new showrooms for ready-to-wear and accessories, offices for sales and public relations, and an office for the company president, for a total of 10,000 square feet. Design concept and solution: The Stephan Jaklitsch team sought to design an environment for buyers and editors continuous with the Marc Jacobs brand. The palette of materials—ebonized wood floors, custom sycamore millwork, nickel vitrines and lighting—recalls the Marc Jacobs stores, as does furniture by Christian Liaigre. Video monitors set into the showroom
Swiss architect Gus Wüstemann defines his design approach as “program-free architecture,” in which “everything that contaminates the space with a program disappears.”
Completion Date: March 2010 Owner: Jeff Herdzina, US DATA Corporation Program: A 5,000-square-foot office for an online data company, with a café, conference room, and gaming lounge. Design concept and solution: The architects wanted to convey the client's technological identity while boosting the office's already close-knit atmosphere. The new design features a large, open bullpen of workstations and a conference room bounded by a glass wall etched with numerical sequences to signify streams of data. A bright green wall, jutting and folding at changing angles, defines the circulation through the office like a kind of origami canopy, and divides the
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